Daily Devotional – June 24

Botany

How can a major oil spill on the ocean be cleaned up? We use floating booms to contain the spill and absorbants/pumps to remove the oil from the surface, but what about the submerged oil droplets?

Believe it or not, technology that copies cactus spines will clean this submerged mess. The tapered spines of the cactus Opuntia microdasys efficiently collect water droplets from fog in the harsh ecosystems of central and northern Mexico. When micron-sized, spherically-shaped fog droplets land on the cactus spines, the spine’s shape distorts the water droplet into a clam-like shape. The water droplet wants to stay spherical, so a battle between these two forces pushes the droplet to the base of the spine. The base of the spine is larger than the water droplet, and so the water droplet is immediately absorbed. Copying the cactus spine, researchers made a copper-silicon array with a cactus spine shape and submerged it into a mixture of oil and water. They blasted the mixture with ultrasonic sound waves to create micron-sized oil droplets. The underwater oil droplets collected on the man-made cactus spines in the same way fog droplets collected on real cactus spines. God has designed everything in nature for our wonder and benefit. It is our privilege to search out the Creator’s secrets and apply them to our daily lives. In Scripture, God calls us to “have dominion” over creation; searching out the Creator‘s secrets and applying them to our daily life.

O God, thou hast taught me from my youth:  and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works.

~ Psalm 7 1:17

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.